


owe what we own

by bog gremlin (tomatocages)



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Cohabitation, Domestic Fluff, Getting Together, Kissing, M/M, Mutual Pining, Not Epilogue Compliant, Post-Canon, Prompt Fill, THERE WAS ONLY ONE BED, and they were ROOMMATES
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-29
Updated: 2020-10-29
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:34:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27263557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tomatocages/pseuds/bog%20gremlin
Summary: Shiro loses his apartment, adopts a cat, and finds himself cohabitating with the love of his life. Not in that order.
Relationships: Keith/Shiro (Voltron)
Comments: 40
Kudos: 346





	owe what we own

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Trick or Sheith 2020. Prompt: Black Cat

It will never be enough, the bull kelp like a whip coiling in tender hands,  
hands who know to take or be taken, but take nothing with them: I will marry you.  
I will marry you. So we can owe what we own to every beautiful thing.

— _[Vow](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/148207/vow-5bc8e6513b5a8), _Diana Khoi Nguyen

* * *

Shiro adopts the kitten before he bothers checking the clause about keeping pets in his on-base apartment. By the time the Garrison housing director gets wind of it, the kitten has a food dish, a bed she has never once used, all of her inoculations, and a place in Shiro’s heart. 

“But she’s so small,” Shiro protests. Surely the Garrison can bend the rules for such a tiny thing; Shiro knows he gets a fair amount of slack in the leash they have him on, and this seems in keeping with the status quo. 

Technical Sergeant Mariposa rolls his eyes heavenward, as if seeking patience. Shiro doesn’t have the nerve to tell him that patience is generally not found in the direction: space is an interstate highway that’s perennially under construction. At least on Earth there’s the farce of paperwork to keep people in line.

“I’m sorry, Captain,” Mariposa repeats for the eighth time. “But pets aren’t allowed in Garrison housing. Just like pressure cookers, bread makers, and grow-labs.”

“Look at her,” Shiro says. “She’s a _baby._ ” He’s turning on all his charm for this — it’s a matter of some importance. He proffers the kitten to Mariposa; in Shiro’s big prosthetic palm, the kitten looks like a small, ink-colored ball of fuzz. She lets out a trilling little sound and licks her nose, rearranges her fine whiskers. Objectively, a more adorable sight does not exist. 

“Be that as it may, a baby wouldn’t be allowed in your quarters,” Mariposa points out. He's maintaining professionalism, but only just. “Families get housed in a different barrack. And pets aren’t allowed there, either!” 

Mariposa is only doing his job. It’s a shame he has to contend with the former Champion of the Galra Empire, former Black Paladin, and current Captain of the IGF-Atlas. 

“Want to pet the kitten?” Shiro asks. “It’s friendly.” He scratches behind one of the kitten’s tiny ears with his free hand and she lets out a resounding, obnoxious purr. 

“I’m allergic,” Mariposa says miserably. “And you _have_ to get rid of it. Technically today, but I can give you until the end of the week. I’m sorry, sir. It’s Garrison policy: either the kitten goes, or you do. No exceptions.”

* * *

Surprisingly, almost everyone Shiro complains to about this development takes the Garrison’s side. He hasn’t had the deck stacked this high against him since he was trapped in the Astral Plane; Shiro has been in disciplinary hearings that are more supportive than the response he gets from the paladins. 

“I’m just saying,” Hunk repeats, softening the blow with a slice of pumpkin bread, “you signed the housing agreement when you moved back in, and you’re kind of obligated to set an example.”

 _“Fuck_ being an example,” Shiro sulks. He accepts the pumpkin bread, though. He’s not made of stone, and Hunk made the recipe that has big granules of sugar baked into the top. 

“Dude,” Lance chimes in with the veteran wisdom of someone who didn’t have his own room until he became a Defender of the Universe. His mouth is full, bless him. “It’s like you never shared a living space before, you _gotta_ check to make sure you don’t aggravate anyone's allergies!”

Allura, profoundly allergic to Lance’s cologne collection, nods in agreement. Shiro knew he couldn’t count on her; she keeps mice. 

“I hate cats,” Pidge says.

“You’re a monster,” Shiro tells Pidge. He pours all his angst and disapproval into his tone, but Pidge is unmoved. 

“Don’t look at me like I’m the bad guy here, they’ll pee on everything you love.”

“So what’re you going to do?” Hunk asks. 

“I’m not sure.” Shiro dangles a piece of twine over the kitten’s head and it bats adorably at the string, occasionally getting its little claws stuck in the fibers. “I can’t abandon her, but I don’t have anywhere else to go — apparently the ‘no pets’ ruling extends to the Atlas, otherwise I’d just make her a ship’s cat.”

The three paladins share a meaningful look before Pidge sighs and digs out a battered comms unit. “This calls for the big guns. Think Keith’s back from his mission yet?”

* * *

It’s not that Shiro didn’t think of Keith — the kitten and Keith have a surprising amount in common, namely that Shiro loves them both without reservation — more that he didn’t remember Keith doesn’t live on base like the rest of the paladins. 

“I never see you anywhere else,” Shiro explains. Keith’s helping him pack up the contents of his room, because after fifteen minutes of carefully introducing Kosmo and the kitten, Keith invited both her and Shiro to join them in domestic bliss.

He doesn't put it quite like that, but Shiro can dream. 

“You’re here,” Keith shrugs. “Why would I hang out at the house by myself? I did enough of that before the war.” 

“I might not be a very good roommate,” Shiro warns. “The last time I lived with someone — ”

“— was on the Castleship,” Keith finishes. That’s not what Shiro was going to say; he was thinking more about when he lived with Adam. “I’m familiar with your work. We’ll figure out a system.” 

The kitten mews plaintively as Keith gathers up her food dishes. 

“You just ate,” Shiro tells her. “And you really need a name.”

“You could call her Black,” Keith suggests. He’s terrible at naming things, but it _is_ appropriate: the kitten is a tiny void without any markings. Her big green eyes are all that prevent her from looking like a medium-sized hairball, but it’s a near miss. 

“Black,” Shiro scoops her up. “Ready to get a move on?”

* * *

Keith’s done a lot with his former shack (as Lance calls it): the sheet over the front window has been replaced with actual curtains and the interior is no longer cluttered with repurposed monitoring equipment. There’s even a kitchen, furnished with provisions and cooking equipment (well: a set of knives, a cast iron pan, a baking sheet, two mixing bowls, and assorted spatulas of which Hunk would likely disapprove). The two of them settle into a routine, trading off cooking and washing up duties and alternating whose turn it is to feed the animals. Shiro institutes a house rule about taking shoes off at the front door, but Keith’s the only one who ever sweeps the floor. The overall situation is tidy and welcoming, minimal without feeling sparse.

Still, Shiro is horrified to realize, three weeks into his residency, that he’s taken possession of the sole bedroom. 

He discovers this when he wakes up earlier than usual one morning. He’s been working a variety of shifts all week, and his sleep schedule is fucked to hell as a result. He figures he might as well get up and teach himself how to use the French press Keith purchased after the third morning of Shiro stumbling around in search of a hot beverage. It’s the thought that counts — Keith only ever seems to have decaf coffee on hand — but Shiro is less interested in having _coffee_ in the morning than he is in having a _ritual_ in the morning. 

As soon as he opens the bedroom door, Black makes a beeline for the couch, one of the few pieces of furniture Keith has yet to upgrade. And there, half-slumped over Kosmo, is Keith. At first Shiro thinks he must have fallen asleep while reviewing documents for an upcoming Blade check-in. Keith’s always been a bit of a night owl, and Shiro’s used to going to bed before Keith even dresses down for the night. But then he takes in the setup: Keith’s devices are changing on the floor, Keith’s shoes and jacket are neatly arranged by the door, and the sleepy positioning of Keith’s body on the furniture speaks of habit rather than happenstance. It’s a small house and it’s not unrealistic for it to have only one bedroom, he supposes, but Shiro’s been more concerned with the logistics of having a commute for the first time in his professional life to really survey the floorplan of his new abode.

“Keith,” Shiro whispers. “Wake up. You’re not sleeping on the couch, are you?”

“If you want me to wake up,” Keith mutters, “why are you whispering? This is where I sleep.”

Black oozes up from somewhere around Keith’s knees and clambers over Kosmo’s folded-back ear to cuddle under the edge of Keith’s chin. She fits perfectly in the hollow of his throat; her resounding purr almost seems to come from Keith himself. 

“Hi, kitty,” Keith whispers. He’s still got his eyes closed. The thick lashes are a little crusty with sleep; objectively, it’s gross, but Shiro always finds Keith endearing. Shiro is endeared. “You gonna help your pa make his coffee, mm? No? You’re gonna sleep in with me.” 

“Keith,” Shiro whispers again. “Keith, did I take your bed?”

“What’s mine is yours,” Keith curls tighter around their animals, the very picture of spine-ruining contentment. “Get me after you make your coffee?”

Keith asks so little of him. Shiro sighs and goes to accomplish this task. 

The animals both look like they’re judging him, though.

* * *

Keith avoids Shiro for the next week, so they don’t talk about how Shiro moving in has evicted Keith from his own bed. 

Well. 

_Avoid_ is a strong word. Keith’s off-Earth for a Blade mission, but the timing is awfully convenient.

“What are you talking about?” Hunk blinks when Shiro brings it up over one of their lunch dates. Hunk’s good like that: he has a rotation. He brings Shiro lunch every Thursday, which is occasionally the only grasp Shiro maintains on the structure of the week. “Keith’s place has always had the one bedroom. I figured you two were just moving in together.”

“We did move in together,” Shiro explains. “He helped me pack up my quarters, I unpacked at his place, and that was that.” He doesn’t bother to explain the intricacies of the move to Hunk; it’s hard to put how he feels about Keith into words that are fit for common consumption. In many ways, moving in with Keith had been exactly like adopting Black. It means Shiro never gets caught up in the loneliness of having a human form again. There’s always another body around, making still-alive noises, that keeps him anchored. It hadn’t occurred to Shiro to look into how the living arrangements were divided up. It’s been a long time since he cared about that sort of thing, and Keith is casually generous with his possessions. The arrangement has felt expansive from the start. 

Hunk buries his face in his hands and breathes deeply, the way Shiro’s aunt Noemi used to do whenever Shiro asked a question for which she needed to gird her loins to formulate an answer. “Aren’t you two married or something?” 

Shiro considers this. “Keith’s my emergency contact. And my medical power of attorney.”

“And you love him, right?’

“Of course.”

 _“Shiro,_ ” Hunk wails. _“Romantically.”_

“I’m not being obtuse,” Shiro says. “But it’s really none of your business.”

“I’m going to _make_ it my business,” Hunk drops his hands and rolls his eyes theatrically. “Believe me, I’d rather not. Getting involved is going to give me, like, serious hives, this is so stressful. I bet Pidge rigged the algorithm.”

A sense of dread fills Shiro’s chest. “What algorithm?”

“They said it was more scientific than a coin flip or drawing straws, but I’m pretty sure Rover has a bias — ”

_“Hunk.”_

“Okay.” Hunk lays his hands flat on the edge of Shiro’s desk. “You two are a packaged deal, right? So just — I don’t know, keep taking care of each other.”

It’s not _bad_ advice.

* * *

Shiro doesn’t give a lot of thought to comfort. He used to; back before he left for the Kerberos mission, he’d invest in his self-care, whether it was managing his diet plan or getting custom insoles for his uniform boots. Sometimes he even got a manicure. He thought about those little physical comforts a lot when he was imprisoned, or at least he imagines he did (some of those memories have stayed locked away, and Shiro hasn’t invested a lot of effort in unearthing them). 

He hadn’t noticed until recently that he’s been sleeping better, something that coincides with moving into Keith’s home (and Keith’s bedroom). According to Hunk, Keith bought the bed once he knew Shiro needed a place to stay. He really has been sleeping on the couch since the war ended: Shiro didn’t steal this from him. 

Shiro is not a stay-in-bed person. He dislikes the sense of convalescence it gives him, and he’s always been a man of action. But the bed at Keith’s house is a different country entirely. The mattress is a perfect combination of firm and soft, the sheets are cool, the quilt a perfect weight to ward off the desert chill. It’s almost as if the bed was engineered with his specifications in mind — and in a way, it was. It’s a bed that’s perfect for Shiro, who’s a big man, and there’s enough room to accommodate the incomprehensible amount of space Black takes up when she sleeps with him at night. It’s funny; she’s such a small kitten, and she still takes up over half the bed. She’s a black hole, but another person could fit beside Shiro, easy. 

He has a lot to think about, when he frames it like that. 

Keith returns from his mission. He arrives the same way he left: Shiro’s office is empty one moment, and the next Keith is slumping into one of the awful orange chairs across from Shiro’s desk.

“Don't sit down, you’ll never get up again,” Shiro chides, in lieu of welcoming Keith back to Earth. “I’m signing out for the night, you can ride home with me.”

“Can we get Coffee Cup on the way?” Keith asks, obeying Shiro’s order and clambering back to his feet. He’s clearly tired, but he’s not moving like he’s injured anything. As far as Shiro’s been able to glean, the mission was more bureaucratic in nature than anything else: a slog of meetings. That kind of ordeal takes more out of Keith than any battle ever has. 

“You got it,” Shiro agrees. Coffee Cup is a disreputable-looking restaurant that used to be located in an old shipping container (before the war) and is now run out of a skeletonized all-terrain vehicle, supported by a fleet of camp stoves. It’s a destination for Thai fusion and, if you get there before the grills get switched over for the lunch rush, mysteriously fluffy pancakes.

He snags his uniform coat from the back of his chair and emerges from the cave of paperwork to he’s been exiled for the past nine hours. “My treat tonight.”

“My hero,” Keith says, wry sincerity plain in his voice. One of the broad sashes is in danger of slipping off his shoulder, but Shiro doesn’t bother to point it out. It gives Keith a pathetic, attractive air, like one of the heroes in the period dramas that are always on the view screen in the officer’s lounge.

There’s a line at Coffee Cup, but a group of cadets who are the bane of Shiro’s Interstellar Ethics class notice them and surrender their place in line. Shiro thinks it has less to do with hopes for an improved grade — they’re not in any danger of failing — and more because even half-asleep on his feet, Keith is imposing and recognizable. And tragically beautiful. 

Pi, owner of the Coffee Cup since Shiro’s own cadet days, is less impressed, but she does remember Keith’s old standby order: it’s always reminded Shiro of phla nuea with eggplant, except Pi’s version — specific to Keith, Shiro’s never seen it on the menu — comes wrapped in a wad of fry bread. 

“Still too skinny,” she chides, and shakes a spoon in Shiro’s direction. “You’re not doing your job, mister fancy-ship.”

“He does fine,” Keith says, making heart-eyes at his order. “I missed you, Pi.”

“Flatterer.” She huffs and bundles over another styrofoam clamshell. How has takeout packaging not changed in all the years the Earth has been at war, Shiro wonders. It’s Shiro’s own order, a salad of fermented chili paste, green papaya, and crayfish. 

They eat standing next to Shiro’s hoverbike in the parking lot, illuminated by a truly wretched fluorescent marquee advertising the restaurant’s specials. There are leftovers — Pi is notorious for leftovers, which is perhaps why her restaurant was Keith’s favorite, back in the day — and Shiro seals them into the cooler bag he keeps in the bike’s storage compartment. 

He gets them home in one piece. Still, by the time he parks the bike and dismounts, Keith is starting to resemble the shredded papaya from Shiro’s dinner: floppy and indiscriminate. Kosmo makes a huffing sound of disapproval when the leftovers go into the cooling unit — he also likes Pi’s cooking — before taking up the whole of the couch. This is Kosmo’s version of being in a huff. He must have gone right back to the house after he and Keith got back from the Blades, and Kosmo always whines when he isn’t met at the door with a luxurious quantity of hugs and dehydrated jerky.

Instead of showering, Keith strips out of his uniform and washes off in front of the laundry sink. Black has started trying to participate in the household bathing rituals, which means Shiro acts as a chaperone to Keith’s ablutions. If he doesn’t, Black is liable to stick her head in the faucet, mew in protest, and try to escape the wet by scaling Keith’s bare torso with her needle-claws. It’s happened before.

“Kos,” Keith moans afterwards, leaning against the doorway to the front room. “Where ‘m I supposed to sleep, buddy? We’ve _talked_ about this.” He hasn’t quite toweled his hair dry, and the length of it is resting damply down his back. Shiro should probably offer him a shirt, but he’s — not going to. 

“Leave him,” Shiro says. “Hey, what’s a guy gotta do to get a _welcome home_ hug around this joint?”

“I’m on a _mission,_ ” Keith protests.“There’s a beast in my bed, don’t you have my back?” 

“Yeah, I’ve got bad news for you, Commander,” Shiro finally gets an arm around Keith and coaxes him into a hug, squeezing hard until Keith reciprocates. _“There_ we go. Welcome home. I can bench more than Kosmo weighs, but I don’t want to get on his bad side when we’re out of the beef trachea he likes.” 

Keith slumps gratifyingly into Shiro’s bulk, and doesn’t complain when Shiro takes the opportunity to sweep him off his feet and carry him to the bedroom. Shiro appreciates how agreeable Keith is when he’s this tired; if the tables were turned, Shiro knows he would be insufferable. 

“I’ve spoiled him,” Keith says bleakly. “My only wolf. I raised him from a puppy, you know.”

“You mentioned,” Shiro agrees. He jogs Keith a bit in his arms so he can pull back the quilt and deposit his burden on the wonderful bed. “Fortunately, you don’t have to sleep on the couch. There’s a perfectly good bed.”

“It’s your bed,” Keith protests. Still, he cuddles agreeably beneath the quilt as Shiro tucks him in. 

“We can share,” Shiro promises. “See? Right where I belong.” He kicks off his shoes and gets a knee up on the bed, straddling Keith so he can pull himself up onto the mattress. It takes a minute, but he’s able to roll into the empty space near the wall without knocking Keith in the kidneys. 

“Perfect,” Keith decrees. Then, shy even though Shiro’s eyes haven’t adjusted to the dark, he adds, “it’s good to be home.” 

* * *

Shiro wakes after the most restful ten hours of his life to find himself spooned tight against Keith’s bare back. He considers rolling away, but a faint purr informs him that Black has spooned Shiro in turn, and if he turns over he’s liable to squash her. Instead, he adjusts his flesh hand so it fits more comfortably in the little gap between Keith’s neck and shoulder. He takes Keith’s pulse while he’s there. No sense wasting proximity. 

Keith’s heart is slow, but he’s fit; Shiro’s own resting heart rate is similarly sluggish. If he were touching Keith with his prosthetic he might be able to compare the two, but Shiro still hasn’t spent a lot of time exploring the scan settings on his arm. Aside from opening doors, lifting animals, and throwing the occasional punch, he tries to ignore it. He’s happy to have another arm; he misses having a _fore_ arm if he dwells on it. 

“You awake?” Keith asks. 

“Just,” Shiro answers. He slides his hand from beneath Keith’s neck to pat lightly at his sternum. It’s a little awkward; Shiro has to wiggle his palm and wrist past the jut of Keith’s collarbone to reach, and ends up with his arm bolstered between the pillow and Keith’s skin, hooking his elbow so his hand falls diagonally across the breadth of Keith’s chest _._ “Feeling better?”

“I haven’t slept that well in — ever,” Keith grunts, and rolls over to bury his face in Shiro’s pecs. “Ugh. ‘S my turn to — to food the cat, isn’t it.”

“She’s sleeping in the small of my back,” Shiro reports. “I think we have time.”

“Good,” Keith breathes in deep, but there’s not quite enough jaw involvement for it to be considered a yawn. “Okay. Ten minutes.” And he falls asleep again. It’s an enviable quirk: as soon as Keith verbalizes the amount of time he’s going to sleep for, he’s like his own snoozed alarm. In ten minutes, he’ll blink back awake and actually get out of bed. 

Sure enough, ten minutes later they’re both stumbling to the kitchen, Black pouncing at their bare feet when they aren’t fast enough filling her dish. On the couch, Kosmo lifts his head like he’s sending up a periscope to check on what they’re cooking for themselves. 

PIdge programmed Shiro's communicator to send an automatic “day off notification” if he hasn’t picked up the screen in a certain amount of time. It’s not a feature he used often, but it comes in handy today. Shiro doesn’t feel any urgency or guilt about eating Coffee Cup leftovers for breakfast and listening to Keith’s awkward impressions of the petty warlords he negotiated with on his mission. 

They take Kosmo for a run in the canyon later in the day, even though it’s scorching hot and there’s an advisory to keep cool; it’s the best way to avoid an audience. Shiro brings Black a long, and even though she doesn’t mind her tiny harness, she spends most of the excursion hitching a ride on his big shoulder port. 

“You’re her vessel,” Keith laughs. “Black’s your pilot.” 

“Come closer,” Shiro wheedles. “Just watch, she’ll jump ship, you’re not out of her line of sight.”

“Your cat, you get to carry her!”

“That’s not what you said last time Kosmo wouldn’t get in the bath,” Shiro points out. “Why I had to be the one to lift a teleporting space wolf we both know is susceptible to bribery is beyond me, I thought you cared for my well-being.”

Backlit by afternoon sun, it’s hard to tell if Keith is smiling, but he sounds the way he does whenever Shiro makes him laugh. “Just keeping you on your toes.”

* * *

They don’t sleep together every night, but it becomes more common. If Shiro’s not asleep by the time Keith turns in for the night, he makes a point of herding Keith into the bedroom. Once they’re both there, it’s easy for Keith to acquiesce and take his place under the covers. They both sleep better like this. Shiro isn’t sure if it’s because he trusts Keith, or if it’s because the bed is cosier than ever with two people in it. He’s not going to look a gift horse in the mouth, but he does rifle through his belongings until he finds the little travel iron he uses for tidying up his dress uniform.

Once Shiro starts ironing the pillowcases: they sleep even better. There’s something decadent about it, the way the sheets feel smooth and endless. It’s a pleasing contrast to the way Keith stretches out, leggy and dear, on his side of the mattress. Keith’s sleep is a balm even when Shiro’s working an opposite shift, because he starts coming home to Keith in the bed without Shiro having to first coax him into it. 

Between the cat and having Keith all to himself, Shiro starts spending more time at the house and less time in the office. 

“Black isn’t like Kosmo,” he says, excusing his absence. “She’s not an office animal, and I’m pretty sure she’ll climb the walls if I leave her alone for too long.”

“You adopted a cat!” Lance argues. Allura has taken to making popcorn every time they have this conversation; she’s convinced it’s dinner theater, and no one has bothered to correct her. “Cats can be left alone!”

“Does Black know she’s a cat?” Hunk wonders. “I had a cat once — well, my cousin did — but it ended up thinking it was one of the chickens. Kept trying to hatch eggs.”

“She spends most of her time with Kosmo,” Pidge allows. “Huh. A cat that’s like a dog might be okay.”

“Regardless,” Shiro says. ( _“Irregardless,”_ Pidge hisses gleefully, solely to make everyone else grimace.) “I have responsibilities that lie elsewhere this evening, so I’m going home.”

“Take Keith with you,” Lance says. “He’s an eyesore.”

“Keith can hear you,” the man in question says from his own corner of the room. He’s mending the sash from his uniform; the last mission he was on resulted in a gaping tear along one of the pleats. The other paladins are betting it’s from another one of Keith’s death-defying acrobatics, but Shiro’s pretty sure he just got caught in a doorway again. Keith’s so much smaller than the rest of the Blades that the automatic doors keep closing before he makes it all the way through the aperture. 

“Keith’s my ride,” Shiro adds.

“Ride or die!” Lance crows.

“Right, you two live together,” Pidge says. “How’s domestic bliss treating you? Do you two ever argue?”

“Not really,” Shiro answers without thinking. “We have a chore chart.” 

“Are we sure Keith’s the only alien?”

There’s a short, ugly silence after this remark. No one has brought up Shiro’s clone origins in a while now, and he was starting to think it was a topic that had been retired. But no such luck. 

“He was like this before Kerberos,” Keith rescues him without making any fuss, like he’ll always rescue Shiro, even from something as mundane as a conversational pitfall. “He was the Garrison’s most photogenic square, remember?”

“I was _not,_ ” Shiro argues. “Who taught you how to fly off a cliff? Would a square do that?”

“Oh, _you’re_ to blame for that one,” Hunk says, disgusted. “It might have saved our lives, but at what cost?”

* * *

In late summer, Shiro arranges for a week’s worth of days off. The time has been accumulating to the point where Veronica has set up a countdown board on the bridge of the Atlas. It reads: _It has been 64 days since Captain Shirogane took a day off_. Shiro has always felt slightly susceptible to public shaming; it’s why the Garrison has put up with him for so long.

“If you don’t take your PTO,” Veronica intones, “no one else will take their PTO.”

Keith doesn’t bother trying to get the time off as well, but Shiro has hopes that they’ll at least have a few days overlap after Keith’s current mission. Like many of his hopes regarding Keith, it comes to fruition.

When Keith comes home, he’s met first by Black, who’s starting to grow out of kittenhood and into adolescence — her balance is terrible. Shiro stands back while Keith pays her the attention she deserves, only stepping forward once Black changes her tune and sprints off, satisfied with her reception. 

“Welcome home,” Shiro says. They’ve both started saying that: _welcome home,_ rather than _welcome back._ “The house was quiet while you were gone.”

“I’m not that loud,” Keith says as they embrace. “But it’s good to be home.”

By mutual and unspoken agreement, they turn in early. Shiro has noticed he doesn’t sleep as well when Keith is gone and Keith never sleeps well on a mission, for all he’s trained himself to nap when the need arises. 

Shiro turns down the covers while Keith showers off for the night, suppressing a little thrill at the thought of bed, and Keith, and a good night’s sleep. 

It’s Keith’s turn to sleep against the wall. Shiro agrees that this part of sleeping together, where they alternate who gets which side of the bed, is probably strange — he and Adam each had their own sides, and never even rolled into the empty space when the other wasn’t in attendance — but it’s almost like trading watch. Some nights Keith sleeps next to the wall and Shiro guards his back, and sometimes it’s the other way around. No matter the arrangement, it's reliable.

They always end up squashed close together. It’s a generously proportioned bed, but it could be an Alaskan King and they would still run out of room: Black has a way of curling up exactly where a person is meant to lie, and neither of them have the heart to move her. 

“Did Kosmo ever do this?” Shiro asked once, groggy and slightly cramped from curling his legs up so he didn’t kick the cat.

“We didn’t have a bed,” Keith answered, rolling obligingly onto his side so Shiro could have more space. “Kos likes to be the big spoon, though. Maybe it’s an animal thing.”

It’s probably a dominance thing, Shiro thinks. Neither he nor Keith are the alpha in this house. 

Keith makes a decadent noise when he lays his head against the freshly-iron pillowcase. Shiro did the laundry as soon as he saw the alert that Keith was on his way back. 

“This is the nicest place in the universe,” Keith sighs. 

“What, our house? Or our bed?” Shiro settles in on the side of the bed facing the door. He doesn’t feel particularly vulnerable when faced with a door these days, and this spot has the added benefit of being next to the end table (an old crate full of discarded library books: Keith will read anything). 

“Both?” Keith turns his head and looks across the pillows at him. He ought to braid his hair before he falls asleep, or it’ll end up in both their mouths come morning. 

Shiro lays back so they’re looking at each other along the same plane, and fumbles for Keith’s hand. The big floating prosthetic also lives on the bedside table at night, so he has to stretch his left arm across his own body in order to make the connection. Keith meets him halfway. 

Shiro wonders, sometimes, what it must look like to people outside this room: the two of them sharing a house and a bed, holding hands and talking until they fall asleep. For Shiro, it feels like the most natural thing in the world. Lying in bed with Keith is restful and good. 

“We’re together, aren’t we?” He asks instead of answering Keith’s question. 

Keith laughs, a little splutter that rises up and falls back down the length of his pale throat. “Yeah. Yes. I mean, I hope so.”

“We are,” Shiro says, firmly. He gives Keith’s fingers a little squeeze, reassuring. “Now move your legs over, quick, I think Black’s still on the couch. If we play our cards right we might get to use most of the bed.”

“We could shut the door,” Keith points out, even as he obeys. 

“You have a teleporting space wolf, tell me how well that’s going to work out for us,” Shiro snarks back. “She’s a _cat,_ do doors mean anything to her?”

“She found the door into your heart pretty quick,” Keith yawns hugely and his grasp on Shiro’s hand goes a little limp as he relaxes, on the verge of sleep. 

“Doesn’t make any sense,” Shiro grumbles. But he turns out the light and shifts so Keith can curl up in the lee of his back, just like Black would if she weren’t crouching in the doorway like an absolute gremlin, the ambient light reflecting off her eyes. She stalks across the floor and makes the flying leap to land on Shiro’s shoulder, where she bats ineffectually at the glow of his prosthetic port before slipping down his back and, presumably, walking across Keith’s face so she can curl up against _his_ back.

“Good kitty,” Keith murmurs. 

* * *

When Keith presents Shiro with a set of new linens for their bed — it’s the one year anniversary of Shiro moving in, and Black has occasionally sharpened her claws on the sets they already own; they’re about due for a replacement — Shiro realizes he’s let time get away from him.

“What do you mean, time’s gotten away from you,” Hunk asks. He is, for once, not the bringer-of-lunch; it’s Shiro's turn to cater. Hunk is making noise about leaving the Garrison and going back to school, so now their meet-ups revolve around street fairs and pop-ups. This time, it’s a glass-blowing demonstration.

“I’ve been with Keith for a year,” Shiro explains. “I got comfortable.”

“Were you planning on leaving him? Because Shiro, if you are, I’m going to say it: we’re all taking Keith’s side in the divorce. I don’t know where you’ll end up, since he’s the one who goes to space more often than not — ”

“Not like that,” Shiro says, though he’s not sure if he’s correcting the assumption that he’d every abandon Keith, or if he’s protesting the implication that they’re already a designated couple. “I just haven’t talked to him about it.”

Hunk looks equal parts pained and judgmental. “Dude,” he says. “I know you’re in therapy. We all are. It’s required.”

“What’s that got to do with this conversation?”

“Just not sure why I’m your relationship guru when you’ve got a perfectly nice professional who can help you, I don’t know, make a plan,” Hunk says. “Wow, look, they made a pumpkin! It’s kind of cute.”

“Keith’s special,” Shiro says, tamping down his agitation. “He deserves more than me moving in with him because it’s convenient.”

“You moved in with him a _year_ ago!”

“Yeah,” Shiro says, “but I don’t think I ever said I was staying.”

“That’s it,” Hunk snaps. “Lunch date cancelled. You’re ruining a perfectly educational outing with your navel-gazing, you brought _egg salad_ , and now you’re just pulling my leg. Go propose to your boyfriend and leave me to broaden my horizons in peace.” 

Shiro’s written a lot of proposals in his time, but that’s — an interesting idea. 

* * *

Shiro can be brash. He’s not right now; once he gets home, he toes off his shoes at the front door and teases Black by piloting his arm around the front room so she can leap and bat at the light it emits. It’s good practice for him, since controlling the arm is a mental exercise. Like any muscle, he needs to keep it in shape. 

Occasionally, he lets Black catch it in mid-flight. He can tell that she’s gnawing on his fingers, but it doesn’t register as painful. 

“Lot on your mind?” Keith asks when he walks in, a couple hours later. Black has vanquished Shiro’s prosthetic and has draped herself along the forearm, resting her chin in the open palm. Amazing, Shiro thinks; when she was a baby, her whole body fit in the center of his hand. 

“Oh, just the fate of the known universe,” Shiro answers. 

“Right,” Keith lets the sashes of his uniform slip down his shoulders so they drape over his hips, exposing the sleek suite he wears beneath the tunic. He’s gotten leaner, since the war ended: there’s not as much use for bulk in his current incarnation as a relief worker, and his constant rotations in space tend to send him back to earth with significant atrophy, something he and Shiro spend much of their gym sessions combating. “Nothing unusual, then.”

“I washed the new sheets,” Shiro says. “Put them on the bed.”

Keith’s eyes are alight with pleasure. “And it’s not even laundry day.”

“You spoil me, I spoil you,” Shiro says. He feels brazen, powerful. “That’s how this is supposed to work, right?”

He stands tall as Keith examines him, gauging, Shiro supposes, his sincerity. Shiro meets that gaze head-on. The way Keith absorbs information is a constant, and Shiro is determined to get his point across, even if he has to resort to romance movie shenanigans and train Kosmo and Black to hold up little handwritten signs emblazoned with the heart of the matter. (If Shiro were thinking about that option. Which he isn’t. But handwritten declarations would be the way to go; Keith likes mementoes, even if he rarely collects any.)

“Wow,” Keith says at last. He’s speaking in a tone that Shiro adores, soft and wondering. Shiro normally hears it when Keith’s talking to the animals, or calling his mother: the sound of love. “I didn’t think you’d ever catch up with me.”

“Hey,” Shiro says. “I’m not that dim.”

“Not like that,” and Keith’s walking across the front room, not in any kind of hurry, just sure of his destination. “You’re not slow. I just didn’t expect you to join me here.”

“Where, in our house? Or in connubial bliss?” Keith’s in front of him now; they’re toe-to-toe. Shiro gets his hands on Keith’s waist. It’s different from just hugging him. Keith reaches and sets both hands on Shiro’s shoulders, and here it is: their first kiss. They’re both covered in cat hair. 

“I don’t know what ‘connubial’ means,” Keith says. He’s still got his eyes closed and there’s a hint of a dent in his lower lip: Shiro’s not sure if he put it there, or if Keith’s mildly dehydrated. 

“It means that we’re going to go into our bedroom,” Shiro tells him. “And we’re going to lock the cat out, and we’re going to lie down in our bed. And this time, when I get my arms around you, it’s not going to be because she's hogging the mattress and I don’t have anywhere else to go.”

Keith says, “yes _sir,_ ” breathy and delighted, and turns from Shiro’s embrace in order to lead the way. 

* * *

It’s not a marriage, really, in any traditional sense. But what about them is traditional? Pretty much just their bed, Shiro thinks, and possibly pet ownership. 

“How long have we been together?” he asks Keith, later, despite already knowing that he doesn’t need an answer. 

Keith looks at him sidelong. They’re still in bed, wrapped around each other and watching the space beneath the bedroom door. Black has been sliding her paws beneath the door off and on for the past hour — she might be compelled by the light of Shiro’s prosthetic on the nightstand — and there’s real concern that she'll pester Kosmo until he picks her up by the scruff and teleports her into their room. “What do you mean?” 

It’s a fair question. Keith doesn’t measure time like anyone else Shiro’s ever known, and the two of them have come together in such a back-to-front way. Shiro’s mostly asking for his own amusement, a form of pillow-talk. He’s loved Keith for so long that it doesn’t have a defined beginning, even if their relationship is full of declarations and pivotal events. Keith is a constant. It feels like it’s been longer than the year they’ve lived together. 

“You’re the one who remembered an anniversary gift,” Shiro points out. “Thank you, by the way.”

“It’s for both of us,” Keith demurs. “We both sleep in this bed.”

“I like that,” Shiro tells him. “That it’s our bed, I mean.”

“It not the only co-ownership we’ve ever had,” the other Black Paladin points out. 

“I know.” Shiro turns away from the sinister splay of Black’s paws under the doorframe and shifts them both until he’s got Keith draped over him instead of the blanket. He’s not as warm as the quilt, but Shiro likes this better. He groans happily once he’s got his hand cupped around Keith’s nape, the better to coax his mouth within reach. “I’d be lost without you.”

Shiro loses the thread of their conversation for a few minutes, until Keith pulls back and props himself up on his elbows, looking down on Shiro like some wild, beloved creature. He looks mussed and flushed and fond. “Guess I’m a cat person now,” Keith says. “If that’s what brings you home.”

“I thought you liked Black!”

“I do!” Keith dips down and kisses the scar over Shiro’s nose. It’s a benediction. “And letting a cat move in was worth it, even if I shouldn’t have bought white sheets.”

“Cat hair,” Shiro sighs in agreement. “It’s eternal. Practically a stand-in for our vows.”

“We are pretty married, aren’t we,” Keith says. “Are cat years like dog years? We’ve been together since Black was a baby.”

“Longer than that,” Shiro says, “counting the war. Counting all the times you saved me.”

“Don’t talk about the war with your beautiful mouth,” Keith says. “There’s no room for it in this bed. This is just for you and me.”

“Kiss me again, then,” Shiro orders, “before the cat figures out how to get through the door.”


End file.
